Mohammad Hidayatullah Quotes

He was a man of many parts – Law, Literature, Public Affairs, International Affairs and Education. In the field of Law he held all offices which any lawyer can aspire to hold – Government Pleader; Advocate General of C.P. & Berar; Judge of the Nagpur High Court; Chief Justice of the Nagpur, High Court; Judge of the Supreme Court and culminating as the Chief Justice of India. He served as a Judge for 25 years.

As Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, he had the awesome task of dealing with some unruly scenes. He did so with aplomb and finesse, often with a witticism that helped defuse the situation.

I was so excited to hear the Trinity College the first night of my stay in the College:
Trinity’s loquacious clock Who never let the quarters, night and day,
Slip by him improclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice...

In Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra (AIR 1968 SC 881), he declared the law on the subject as to when a book can be regarded as obscene. The Judgment laid down important tests of obscenity and their application to the well-known book "Lady Chatterley's Lover" written by Lawrence shows his deep insight into law and literature.

...we need not shed tears over what has happened and we can look forward – not be forward looking, but look forward – to an era which will be as good as the one which has gone before.

Naipaul is sui generis. But many other Indians are cast in that mould, Indians in their basic culture though their high culture is western.

As Vice President, he presided over the Rajya Sabha and conducted its proceedings with great dexterity and wisdom. During his tenure as Vice President, he again acted as the President in 1982.

In the car, President Nixon seemed relaxed and quite flattered by the response of the people. Characteristically he asked me: “Mr President, do people always turn out like this to greet the Indian President or is this because of the President of the United States?” I sensed the comparison. I quietly replied ”Mr President, I would suspect that many youngsters are here to see what a bullet-proof car looks like!” He smiled and replied “You have a point there!”.

It is true that Judges, as the upholders of the Constitution and the laws, are least likely to err but the possibility of their acting contrary to the Constitution cannot be completely excluded.

His Judgment in E. M. S. Namboodripad v. T.N. Nambiar (AIR 1970 SC 2015) illustrates his deep study of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Indeed, in the course of the said judgment, he pointed out how Communists in our country distorted the approach of those eminent men.

In the most inalienable of such rights a distinction must be made between possession of a right and its exercise. The first is fixed and the latter controlled by justice and necessity.

He was a Gandhian in ideology, essentially cosmopolitan in outlook, truly Indian in culture, a poet at heart and an activist in thoughts.

The cherished right on which our democracy rests is meant for the expression of free opinions to change political or social conditions or for the advancement of human knowledge.

The pages of the Law Reports reflect as much his legal learning and contribution to the development of the law, as his erudition; his judgments were all written with elegance and were often infused with the appropriate literary allusion.

I chose the title of the book from Oliver Wendel Holme’s subtitle to his Aristocrat of the Breakfast Table; Every man His own Boswell. I was a miscellanist before I attempted a full length book. I learnt the art of narration from Boswell. After all even Macaulay, in spite of many hard things he said of Boswell, did acknowledge that he was the first of biographers and the world has since considered him the greatest.